Posted by Marvin from cache03.netway.at (195.96.10.36)on June 15, 1998 at 14:26:29:
Ok, today I bought Unreal....
I don't really like this sort of games but let's
see how far we come with wrapper here....
Installation was not really an issue, though
the fact that Unreal always uses software rendering
for in-window rendering is really a bit confusing...
I had not much time yet but I tried some configuration
options....so far I can say the following (all tested
with the new version of the wrapper (which you don't
have yet), but it should not make much difference for
Unreal):
o) Unreal really runs, at least somehow, with the wrapper
o) Unreal is really very CPU/memory,etc... hungry and
I have only a P133/32MB, so it was sometimes a bit
humorous.....
(I tested it in 640x480!)
o) You can run the game with the wrapper both in
windowed and fullscreen mode (wrapper-modes! not
rendering modes - rendering has to be set always
to fullscreen, of course, see above)
In fullscreen mode, however, there is a white
border (1/2 pixels) around one of the two display
surfaces, so you have an annoying, white &
flickering border around your screen....
So for now I recommend setting InWindow=2 (I think
InWindow=1 also works)
o) Speed is very slow in many areas - but the game
let you configure the details, so the default
3dfx configuration is simply too demanding for
the wrapper/for my machine....I will play with the
detail settings....
o) Some new blending modes are not yet supported -
I will work on this....
o) Chromakeying or alphablending does not work correctly
for some details, so, for example, you have to turn
off the light-coronas (default is off for software rendering
and on for 3dfx rendering)
I hope this will be fixed with the new blending modes
o) Most seriously, there are problems with textures, more
correctly, with s/t (u/v) coordinates and their
range of values... Textures are screwed up in many
places - I thought I'd fixed these problems
(for HexenII) but here they are back again....
I will have to take a deeper look into it...
However, as a quick fix, you simply have to
set the DetailTextures option (in rendering options)
to false, most of the problems then go away!!!
But some textures are still wrong....
o) Configuration:
configuration is not very critical,
almost all options don't have much influence
on the visuals (I could not test much yet)
However, one option is absolutely critical for
this game (COSMOS already told this - it was
a big help for me):
FastFloat=0 is absolutely necessary, otherwise
the game quits with an error immediately....
Warning: this option is set in BIGRRED.INI to 1 by
default!
I have no clue why this error occurs, but I am
happy that I left this option in the wrapper....:)
(I never really trusted these strange lines
from the RRedline SDK - this fast floating-to-fixpoint
conversion trick is among the few pieces of code
I really don't understand fully....- and it did
not boost the performance in any measurable way)
Ok, so much for day 0...
(to be continued...)